Lucie Koldová: Glass Represents Resilience

Prague- and Paris-based lighting and furniture designer Lucie Koldová melts together influences from both France and her native country Czech Republic. She designs furniture, sculptures and lighting fixtures by combining classic craftsmanship and cutting-edge technologies.

Koldová graduated at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2009, and established her own studio in Paris in 2012. She began collaborating with the traditional Czech glass manufacturer Brokis in 2010, and has since continued experimenting and working on glass and light.

Lucie Koldová attended a Glass Is Tomorrow workshop for designers and glassmakers in Nuutajärvi, Finland. Glass Is Tomorrow asks about her inspirations and working process with glass.

Glass is Tomorrow: From where does your affinity for glass derive? Why is this medium different from others?

Lucie Koldová: It keeps me going forward. Every project is a challenge. I need to learn and respect the material at the same time. I’m passionate about the combination of fragility, brilliance and firmness. It’s elegant and timelessness. Hand blown glass is a craft where every piece is an original and that’s an important value for me.

How would you describe the process of developing and blowing glass-based designs?

LK: It’s about thinking of transparency, translucent effects, light and proportions. Glass represents resilience though material characterized as strong and fragile at the same time. Somehow the material and its features feel very familiar and close to me. Knowing the process of melting sand into glass is particularly immersive. I constantly try to understand how the material behaves in different stages and volumes.

What was your experience working with Glass is Tomorrow?

LK: For me it was really fruitful to visit the old glass factory in the Finnish village of Nuutajärvi and to compare how the daily work goes in the glass workshop. I observed their local techniques and habits. All in all, great skilled people from different cultures and countries brainstorming all together and helped each other.

What was the nature of collaborating with different designers and glassblowers?

LK: As I said, on one hand it was new and refreshing, on the other sometimes more difficult to share the time and space while trying to achieve maximum results. I had the chance to observe how art glass blowers perceive and feel the material differently than designers. Their work is based upon transmitting the melting hot material into a real shape and the whole process is their main ‘journey.’ As a designer, I tend to be more focused on final results than the procedure itself. These differences I found very exciting and enriching.

How has this experience influenced your practice? Where has it brought you since?

LK: I managed to move forward being way more experienced with the material and also from this point. I could apply interesting glass procedures in my work. It’s always exciting to see craftspeople working with glass in another environment, especially when my background is based on craft and glass. •

Glass Is Tomorrow is a European network, which aims at establishing more fluid exchange of knowledge and competencies between glass and design professionals in the north, south, east and west of Europe. Glass Is Tomorrow is initiated and organized by Brussels-based creative agency Pro Materia, which also publishes TLmagazine with Paris-based publishing house Bookstorming.

Main image
Lucie Koldová: Capsula for Brokis (2013).